


lunatic

by succubused



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Kingdom Hearts III Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/succubused/pseuds/succubused
Summary: lu·na·tic/ˈlo͞onəˌtik/referring to a person who is considered to be dangerous, foolish, unpredictable, or unhinged—conditions once attributed to lunacy. the word derives from lunaticus meaning “of the moon” or “moonstruck”.





	lunatic

_**1\. new moon** _

It still felt strange to see him and feel anything but fear and resentment, but when she found Saïx hunched against the wall, the pang of concern that shot through Xion’s heart was no longer a surprise. She still half expected him to sneer and deride every time she approached him, but the man who had taken it upon himself to be her guardian for the duration of the situation in which they found themselves was nearly unrecognizable as far as his interactions with Xion went. During their days with the old Organization, Saïx had been the person she most dreaded encountering alone. Now, he was one of the precious few she felt she was safe with, and the irony of this was not lost on either of them.

The realization that she cared about what happened to Saïx was a strange one, but it had come to her attention that she considered him to be as close a thing to a friend as she had in this place.

She sat down beside him and watched him pull on his boots. “Where are you going?”

“Something I need to take care of,” he grunted without looking up.

She flinched, remembering how he had staggered back just before dawn, leaving Xion to take the initiative to cover for him when it seemed as though Xemnas was intending to ask questions.

“You said that last time and you—you, the bruises were—you could barely walk.”

“Well, did it look as though I had succeeded?”

“Not even close.”

“Then it would still be something I need to take care of, wouldn’t it?”

“Well…”

She watched his hands carefully as they nervously opened and closed around something in his lap.

“I’ll come.”

“You—” Saïx froze, staring straight ahead. “What? No, you—”

Xion stood and folded her arms. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s—” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, suddenly looking far more exhausted than he had a moment ago. “It’s not safe. As you said, you saw the state I was in after my last altercation.”

She blinked, then giggled. “I haven’t been safe a day in my life. Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t be—” Saïx stared up at her, a smile threatening to break through the storm that clouded his face. “You’ve certainly become sharp around the edges,” he said.

“I’ve been around you.” She offered him her hand and after a moment, he took it and allowed himself to be pulled up. Silly, really, to have a child half his size pulling him around as she did on occasion, but she was strong, and if any of the others had thought to say anything, the look on Saïx’s face quickly crushed such impulses. Xion’s eye fell to the stick still clutched in Saïx’s hand.

“What’s that?”

He glanced down and quickly shoved it back into his pocket, but not before she saw the _winner!_ stamped into the side.

“For luck,” he mumbled. “Old gift. From…”

“Axel?”

“Lea. At the time. But yes, it—yes.”

He braced himself, expecting further prying, but when looked up she had already turned away.

“Where are we going?”

“I…why?”

“Why what?”

“If I didn’t know better I would think you were concerned for me.”

Xion snorted softly with a look that was so much Lea it tugged on the edges of a deep and painful scar he had nearly forgotten how to feel for.

“Maybe. Maybe I’m just bored. Either way, you are _not_ running off and dying and leaving me alone with them.”

Saïx chuckled. “Ah, so it’s selfishly motivated, is it?”

“Sure. If that makes you feel better. Will you tell me what we’re dealing with now?”

“It’s…my.” He closed his eyes. “My heart.”

Xion stared. “Your _what_?”

“My Heartless, to be more precise.”

She looked at the path, letting the air whistle out between her teeth. “Yours, huh?”

“You’re aware of how we were—”

She held up a hand. “You don’t have to go through it again. I know what happened.”

“Most of us, when we were—returned…to this state, they were able to neutralize the remnant very quickly. But…”

“But not yours.”

“No.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “What’s it…like?”

Saïx shuddered, a tiny motion that would have been imperceptible if you didn’t know how to watch for it as Xion did. He rubbed his arm where the worst of the damage had been done the week before. “It’s…unhinged. Vicious. It’s everything I—everything…”

“What you were like.”

“Yes.”

“It’s strong?”

Saïx looked away. “I was…in a great deal of pain at the time.”

“Okay. Let’s kill it.”

His eyes snapped open. “Really.”

Xion shrugged. “I don’t need you to explain yourself. Do you want my help or don’t you?”

“I…”

He stared at her, once again seeing Lea’s edge in her resolute gaze, and suppressed another smile.

“I would appreciate that deeply, Xion.”

_**2\. crescent** _

It was a gamble, and a dangerous one, to have Xion near the thing. Saïx knew this, and he knew he would need to explain to her what it all meant before he let her within arm’s reach, but every time he opened his mouth to try and find the words, to tell her how much of the concentrated rage they were about to encounter considered her to be its very reason for being, she would make some comment about the wind lighthearted enough to betray her cheeriness as being for his benefit or laugh to herself at some unspoken secret, and he was unwilling yet again to explain to her just how bad it had been—but was it even because of her? Had it ever been her fault at all?

Blaming himself was much cleaner. Wounding to the pride, but Saïx figured he deserved that much. And yet it didn’t matter what he thought, because at the point of separation, the swirling darknesses in his head and in his heart that had been given form when the latter was released yet again from his body, those darknesses were born directly from the jealousy his resentment towards Xion and Roxas had built. And those darknesses now had a shape. They had a name.

_Lunatic._

It had screamed its name at him the first time they fought, when he had the hubris to believe he alone could take the thing down. Straight into his mind, the chorus of a thousand death rattles chanting out the word, and it almost seemed poetic, that his anger taken form would name itself after the weapon through which he had allowed it to take control of him.

Continued to allow. It was poisonous and it would end only in tragedy, but it was the only way he knew.

Nearing the glassy cliffs, he finally stopped her.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“There is something you should—”

_come back to haunt me_

“Oh no,” Saïx hissed.

“Is that…”

_do you derive pleasure from grinding salt into old wounds have you not done_ **_enough_ **

“I failed to tell you,” he said quickly, watching the shape emerging from the fog. “This thing—”

“I figured it would hate me,” Xion said quietly. “You did, after all.”

“Xion—”

“Saïx—sorry, no, Isa, right? Your real name is Isa. That’s what you told me…?”

He shook his head slightly, eyes still locked on the shadow. “I’m not Isa again yet.”

“You’re Isa right now. Against that thing, that’s who you are. Got it?”

And Saïx smiled, despite himself. “Memorized? Certainly.”

**_YOU_ **

Saïx held out his hand to stop her and approached it, choosing his steps carefully and slowly. “You know what I have to do,” he said, addressing the Heartless directly now.

The Lunatic hovered before him, crystalline wings bearing an eerie resemblance to the spines of the blade Saïx pulled from the air curled around its body defensively. Despite this, it was not unlike others of its kind, with the heart-shaped hole in its chest, the inky skin and lashing tail and claw-like hands.

“His _face_ ,” breathed Xion.

“I know,” Saïx croaked. “I know.”

It glared down at them with Isa’s face—Isa, not Saïx, and it was this that had paused him so thoroughly last time that he had been rendered nearly incapable of defending himself in any meaningful way. His own face, twisted with all the agony he had never felt safe enough to show out loud, the permanent tear tracks staining its face with a glow as unmistakably green as the eyes that dropped them.

And it drove him to the edge, that this _thing_ still had his eyes while he had to wake up every day and look into the mirror at those of another.

_left behind so decisively, so consistently, now you drag around his toy in the hopes of seeing him smile for you one more time_

“Shut up,” Saïx growling.

**_pathetic_ **

“Is it…saying something to you?” Xion crept forward, eyes flickering between the two of them.

“Xion—it—whatever it says to you—don’t listen, don’t listen to it, do you understand? Do you understand me?”

_I have no wish to speak to it I want only to_ **_crush it_ **

Yet even as it declared this, the shining tears fell faster and brighter, it clawed at the hole in its chest harder, the glassy wings closed over its body tighter, as though it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to live or die, feel everything or nothing, scream or fall silent.

It chose to scream.

“Xion—” He had to shout over the guttural wail of a thousand metal skeletons being torn limb from limb.

“I’m not leaving you alone,” she yelled back.

**_I’m not leaving you alone_.**

A flash of green eyes and red hair and a smile that had always felt like he meant it.

_touching did she get that from_ **_him_ ** _too_

“Shut UP!”

The feral force with which Saïx finally threw himself at the remnant was a striking reminder of the fact that it was, technically, a version of him, of his heart, of how he had felt and hurt and ultimately fallen victim to himself, bled out alone after being slashed to pieces by the jagged edges of the broken heart he had refused to acknowledge the existence of. The strength of the Heartless was a testament to the strength of Saïx’s loneliness, the depth of his agony, and just how long it was he had forced himself to try and fight off all that darkness on his own.

Of course he had failed. Anyone would.

Isa—and he was Isa, Xion thought as she charged towards their clashing bodies, no matter what he said—he was no god. He was only a man, and a young one at that. Trying to carry the weight of a thousand heartbreaks in arms already weakened by the pain of having had to survive them in the first place.

She wasn’t sure that she had forgiven Saïx. She wasn’t sure that she would ever know how. But Isa, she understood. Isa, her heart broke for. And the pain that had turned him into the man who had made her life hell now threatened to destroy them both for a second time.

Xion spun to smash her blade into the Lunatic’s wrists, stopping claws an inch from Saïx’s face and cringing when the howl of pain that tore from its empty chest was unmistakably his voice. _It’s not him. It’s not him._

He looked down at her in wide-eyed surprise, the first time she had ever seen him with an expression so lacking in composure.

“I told you,” she said firmly. “I won’t leave you alone.”

His face twitched, the sister of a smile. He tried to speak, to tell her what those words meant to him, but it caught in his chest and all he could do was nod before they turned in unison to face the Heartless once more.

_you and I know you have always been doomed for this you will always be alone_

Saïx was taken aback by the ferocity with which Xion attacked, barely controlled as she unleashed blow after blow with a grim expression that lent an unfamiliar edge to her childlike face. Her approach was not unlike his own, in more ways than he would have expected. They hurtled through the air alongside one another, almost like a dance, and even as he felt the berserk state begin to take over, Xion’s presence rooted him, kept him from losing his sense of himself as the fury grew. Xion, for her part, watched as Saïx’s movements came to mirror that of the Lunatic as he came closer and closer to a full berserk attack pattern, and she tried not to think too hard about what that might mean.

Together they had the tactical advantage. But the Heartless was impossibly strong, impossibly fast, and impossibly furious, drowning out even Saïx’s enraged screams with its own, and it seemed to be physically incapable of tiring.

When it finally found an opening to kick Saïx away and round on Xion, it was all she could do to look straight into those tear-stained green eyes without wavering, but still she refused to back down, even when it snarled down at her with its face so close she felt the heat radiating from the sick echo of a familiar X-shaped scar.

_this world is poisoned for your having been mistakenly injected into it like a toxin and if my existence means nothing else having erased you will be my only contribution to its chance at a brighter future_

Now _that_ was a familiar tone. “You believe that,” she said, breathing heavily.

_revolting little creature this is your fault this is all_ **_your fault_ **

“Don’t listen to it!” cried Saïx, realizing too late what the creature’s apparent silence meant. “Xion!”

_you ruined_ **_everything_ ** _there was no room in his heart for me you made him realize he never loved me at all once you and the boy reminded him what it felt like and I lost him and_ **_he said he would never leave me alone_ **

But she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, only stood before him with a look of vague horror in her eyes as she was consumed by a single thought: _what have I done._

There was a _clang_ as the wings of the Lunatic heartless smashed against the side of Lunatic itself, striking home where Saïx had thrown himself between the two of them. His body shook with the force of the blow, but Xion was safe. She shook her head to clear it.

“Get _ba—_ ugh!”

Saïx was thrown back hard against the wall by a strong flip of the wing-blades, tried to stand but collapsed on his knees. The Heartless had clearly been waiting for him to slip in such a way. To cave to his emotions and make a mistake. It was the exact same calculation he had made time and time again against his enemies during his first tenure with the original Organization.

**_pathetic_ **

It stalked towards his crumpled form as Xion watched, frozen, mute.

_when I kill you what will happen to your soul_

“I don’t know,” mumbled Saïx, still trying in vain to stand. “I don’t—”

_one day they will find me and they will kill me and they will think this is how they save you and all that awful hope in their hearts will wait and wait and wait and your body will return but there will be no soul to shape your heart and they will scream your name and shake you but you will be an empty husk a reminder of all the ways they failed you it is nothing less than they deserve_

“No…”

“ _Stop it!_ ”

And they both turned to see Xion, charging with her weapon out, the reddish glow leaking from her eyes and from the edges of her form indicative of none other than a berserk state. She leapt between them, putting herself between Saïx and the Lunatic heartless as he had shielded her only moments before, and for a moment they stood there, Saïx half-conscious on the ground, Xion blazing like a newborn star as she glared up at their adversary with her keyblade held out before her in warning, the Heartless floating before them, clawing at its own empty heart as pale green tears flowed harder and harder down its smoky skin, wings closing back over itself in a defensive position.

Xion was protecting him.

**_why?_ **

After everything he had done to her, and it had all gone backwards, it had all doubled back on him now and the compassion she radiated was so much more than anything he would ever have the right to, and as such it was given, rather than earned.

It was possible that together they could defeat it, wounded though they both were. They fought as a remarkably well-tuned unit despite their inexperience as a team, despite Saïx’s complete lack of familiarity when it came to fighting alongside anyone at all after all these years. Nothing was out of the question.

Xion looked back over her shoulder, eyes still flickering with the unnatural lights that hadn’t quite yet faded, the remnant of her brief but powerful brush with the kind of rage that Saïx knew all too well. And he saw her stagger just a little as the adrenaline of it wore off, saw the nearly imperceptible twitch of the Lunatic that told him he hadn’t been the only one to notice, and his decision was already made.

Watching him face it for the last time, Xion was struck by how small he looked.

“Begone,” Saïx said hoarsely.

_**3\. quarter** _

His fingers closed around a familiar wooden stick and he stared down at the bluish-white ice cream Xion had placed in his hand. _She had no way of knowing_. And yet the look on her face was expectant in a way that suggested she had somehow guessed.

“How?”

“Demyx,” Xion said with that same cheerfulness, functionally unrecognizable as being false. “No one notices when he goes anywhere.”

“You’re…right.” Saïx glanced at her thoughtfully. “They don’t…”

“Axel used to—I mean, I thought…”

Painful to recognize how afraid she still was of upsetting him, of what might happen if she said the wrong thing. The unbearable compassion of the act despite it all was excruciating.

He smiled at her and shook his head slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “That was kind of you.”

It was true that it hurt to be reminded of the days in which he had been left behind so quickly. But he could no longer blame Xion for that pain. He could blame no one but himself.

“Saïx?”

“Yes?”

“You said the new world…what he wants us to help him do, it will be better for everyone, right?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Xion looked down. “Will…Axel and Roxas be there?”

He wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth. But it was the same principle on which he had cut off their altercation with the creature. _Unnecessary danger._

“I hope so,” he said instead, looking carefully at the stick of ice cream he held to avoid meeting her eyes. He had avoided eating any of it thus far, fearing the memories that would be provoked along with the sensory recall of the taste.

“Do you think they’ll remember me?”

She had blurted it out quickly, as though afraid she would lose her nerve halfway through the sentence.

“I…”

Saïx wished he had not become so defensively attuned to small motions. Maybe then he wouldn’t have felt the tears hit the stone beside him before Xion hurriedly wiped those remaining from her eyes. He wanted to lie to her.

“I don’t know.”

He couldn’t lie to her.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “I thought—”

“But even if they fail to,” he continued quickly, “Even if they fail. I remembered. They can remember. No tears. We’ll remind them.”

“I bet you wish you could forget, huh?”

“If I had no memory, I would have no way to hold myself accountable for it all.”

Xion blinked at him.

“I don’t suppose you will ever really be able to forgive me,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don’t suppose any of you will.”

“I don’t know.” She crossed her legs, unconsciously mirroring him. “I think in a lot of ways I never will. But in a lot of other ways, I already have.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“Well.” He took a careful bite at last. “That’s certainly more than I ever would have asked of—what?”

She continued to stare at him in horror. “You just— _bite_ it? Doesn’t that—hurt? Don’t laugh at me!”

He pressed a hand against his mouth. “Sorry, you just—you sounded like Lea. He hated when I did that. Said it made his teeth hurt just watching.”

“Well, it _does_!”

Saïx paused, considering. “He cried a lot, too. That’s why I gave him…” He tapped the space under his eyes.

“That was you?”

“Mm.”

“You miss him a lot.”

He flinched.

“It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.” She licked her ice cream pointedly as though to set an example. “I think he missed you too.”

“I find that…difficult to beli—”

“He tried to act angry,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “He really did. Whenever he talked about you. I think it helped him…but his eyes always looked so sad. He thought we didn’t see it. I don’t think Roxas did. I didn’t say anything. I could tell, though.”

Saïx was silent.

“I think he’ll forgive you,” Xion said. “I really do. I think he wants to forgive you. Will you forgive him?”

“Forgive him for—what?”

“I’m not stupid, Isa. I saw that thing.”

He sighed. “I…I would like very much to forgive him, yes.”

“Then I think you two will be okay.”

“You are…not what I thought you would be.”

“You’re not who I thought you were either.” She paused. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I…”

He looked away, down at his hands.

“It has been a long time since I went by that.”

“You like it more though, don’t you?”

“I would rather be Isa than Saïx,” Saïx muttered.

Xion looked at him thoughtfully, balancing her empty ice cream stick between her middle and index fingers, and suddenly he remembered why she would understand what it all meant to him. He reached into his pocket and ran his thumb along the old one, feeling the indents where the word still stuck.

“You don’t have to be Saïx,” she said. “Not to me. Not to Ax—Lea. Not if you don’t want to be.”

Isa smiled at her, a little sadly.

“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think life is quite that simple.”

_**4\. full** _

It was supposed to be easy.

The defeat of his Nobody was meant to have saved him, and that was what they had told themselves when they came down on him like an apocalypse, that Saïx had to die so Isa could live. He had known, Xion thought, that it would come to that; everything he had taught her had been leading up to the inevitable moment when he would give her no choice but to turn on him, to help the others bring him down. And even then, the anguish on his face had threatened to tear her still-raw heart out by the roots. Lea’s expression as Isa faded from his arms still was still burned into the backs of her eyelids, even as she tried to tell herself that it was only temporary, that he wasn’t _dead_ dead, that the “see you” had been a promise rather than a platitude.

“He isn’t free yet,” she had told Lea when his eyes grew wide at the sight of the empty patch of floor where he had expected to find Isa, and he had looked at her, and he had understood.

In the end it was the three of them who went to finish the thing. Xion had been surprised, at first, to see Roxas waiting for her, but he simply shrugged and said _I owe him too_.

Strange, to have life pressed back into your hands by the same person who had once told you that you didn’t deserve to lead one at all. And yet, as inscrutable as Saïx had been, everything Xion had seen of Isa told her that he had no interest in being predictable or consistent. Despite that, he only really seemed to want one thing.

He wanted to be himself again. He wanted to be the person Lea had loved again.

Lea, for his part, had listened to her warnings with an uncharacteristically stony expression, unwilling to betray on his face the sinking feeling in his chest that came with the realization of Isa having experienced exactly as much pain as Lea had feared having caused him. He had braced himself for the worst, grateful at least for having had Xion to tell him, to an extent, what to expect.

None of them could have been prepared for the way it took one look at Lea and started to _sob_.

To see such a creature collapse to its knees, locking glassy wings over the head it clutched in its hands like a bomb, all of this would have been enough to freeze Lea’s blood even without the guttural wails wrenching free from its chest, echoing faintly where they reverberated in the hollow spaces where a heart should have been.

When he reached for it, almost instinctively, he could hear Xion in his head saying over and over as she had before they departed, _it’s not him. It’s not him. It will be so much easier if you remember that it’s not him._

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? It _was_ Isa, a piece of him, his barely-rebuilt heart torn from his body, still full of all the jealousy and pain and hate that had built the man they had known as Saïx. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of it, the familiar shape, the shake of the shoulders he recognized with a brutal pang of guilt.

**_why?_ **

It raised its eyes to meet his, and he winced in recognition when he saw the tearstained face.

_was I not enough for you_

His hand hovered above its shoulder, unsure.

“Is that what you—”

Isa’s heartless whirled on him as he spoke, dark claws closing around the arm that had been extended towards it and twisting hard before Lea yanked it away as though he had been burned. It rose into the air, snarling down at him with an expression he had never seen before on any of Isa’s faces.

_you come back to me now you come back and for what_

When Saïx berserked, he had no idea why he was angry, but this thing knew exactly what had created it. And the agony wound together with rage was what defined it, what had defined Saïx, what had made him so terrifying and incomprehensible and impenetrably cold. He had been trying so desperately to hold himself together, to keep the edges closed around— _this._

_was I not ENOUGH_

Lea winced, reaching up towards his ears reflexively, but the voice was not one that traveled by such ordinary paths. It reached up through his chest and filled his head with the metallic wail of a collapsing skyscraper, the sound of glass that broke in the shape of a heartbreak too immense to account for in its entirety. It reached up from his heart and shattered into words that were simultaneously exactly what he had expected and the last thing he wanted to hear.

“Lea.”

Xion stood, stone-faced, glaring up at the Lunatic. Lea couldn’t imagine what it must be saying to her. He didn’t want to know.

“ _That’s_ Saïx?” Roxas stepped forward, holding his two blades out to either side as if to guard the two of them from it. He tensed when he met its eyes.

“It’s his Heartless,” Xion said softly. “It—”

“It’s a part of him.” Lea narrowed his eyes as his hand closed around a white-hot handle. “And…”

“Isa can’t come back until it’s gone.”

Xion had always dropped her center of gravity and held her blade low, mimicking Sora even as Roxas adapted given his penchant for dual-wielding. But as they watched her now, the way she leaned forward and swung it behind her with one hand rather than two was reminiscent of someone else entirely.

She looked at Roxas and nodded.

_Time to return the favor._

It was a strange time to be full of pride, Lea thought as he countered with a sleight of flame, but fighting alongside Roxas and Xion again was a strange feeling on its own, and he recognized now, watching them whirl in complete synchronization with one another, how fierce and graceful the two of them had become. He had, in the past, been constantly looking over his shoulder, watching their backs until they learned how to watch their own, fearing the onset of yet another tragedy caused by his own negligence.

He moved out of Roxas’s way, cloaking his keyblades in flames with a brush of his fingers as the boy rushed past to unleash a vicious slash that sent the Heartless flying.

Lea still watched their backs, as he always would. The difference now was their equal commitment to watching his in return.

And it felt right, to have the three of them here, now, struggling against the last remaining piece of Saïx that blocked Isa’s path home, even with it screaming _you forgot me, you never cared_ over and over and over again, because they proved it wrong with every desperate strike, they proved it wrong by being there at all. Lea had promised to drag him back; he had expected to have the only set of hands that cared enough to do it.

They were so easy to underestimate. They always had been.

_You were never alone._

Xion’s weapon struck home with a heavy _thunk_ and the creature’s laughter howled through them, full of frantic despair.

_this is what you wanted all along_

She made a small sound of frustration when Lea held his arm out to stop her from attacking again. He was staring at the Heartless with an odd expression.

“Is that what you think?”

_it is what I have always known_

“That I wanted you dead?”

_wanted me gone_

“Why would you say that?” He took a step towards it. “Isa, why would you say that?”

“Lea,” Xion murmured, a warning in her tone. “That’s not Isa.”

Lea shook his head. “No,” he said, still staring into the Lunatic’s eyes. “It’s what’s left of Saïx.”

_the look on your face every time you saw me it was like all the_ **_light_ ** _was wiped from behind your eyes you wanted to_ **_escape_ ** _every single time we were alone together you just wanted to leave as soon as your heart returned you just wanted me_ **_gone_ ** _and it was all because they_

“I failed you.”

For the first time, the Heartless became completely still, staring straight into Lea’s eyes with a burning intensity that made returning the look difficult. Difficult, but not impossible, and Lea stared straight back, willing the tears that pricked the back of his eyes to stay put. _Maybe I should’ve asked for the marks back after all._

“You’re right,” he continued, slightly louder. “I did want to escape every time we were alone together. Because being alone with you reminded me that I—failed you, I failed, in every way. In every way. And I’m a coward, Isa. I couldn’t—I couldn’t face it. I didn’t know how to be there for you and I didn’t even try.”

_why?_

It alighted before him, closing most of the distance between the two of them such that it only took a step forward to bridge the gap entirely. Lea could almost smell the darkness coming off of the thing. He imagined that he could smell the tears.

_why didn’t you try?_

“I was—” He closed his eyes briefly. “It was an ugly—I had felt out of place for so long. I felt like I wanted to go home, but nowhere I could call home was a place I wanted to be. And I looked at you and I felt like—I felt like I should have felt safe, but I didn’t. So when I found them…I don’t know.”

_you stopped feeling like home to me too_

Lea blinked.

_it made me hate you and it made me hate them even more when I saw that you had found it again in one another_

Hesitantly Lea placed a hand on the side of the Heartless’s face, on the side of Saïx’s face, and it leaned into the touch, closing its eyes.

“I missed you,” he murmured. “I missed you more than I can say.”

The two of them looked down at the hilt of Lea’s blade, buried in its chest just above the heart-shaped cavity. The flames that always came with the summoning of it licked at the creature’s skin, sending trails of inky shadows streaming up into the air.

_oh_

Lea caught it as it collapsed, and when they fell to their knees in unison, he looked at its face to see that the shining tears had ceased to fall at last. It leaned forward, resting its forehead on his shoulder as it continued to fade, the shadows flying off of it in thicker and thicker waves.

“It’s all right,” Lea said quietly. “You can rest now.”

And when it raised its head for the last time before exploding into a thousand shards of light, the final expression on the face of the Lunatic almost could have passed for a smile.

“Little too familiar,” he muttered as he watched the last fragments vanish, pushing himself to his feet. “Gonna tell him what I think about him always dissolving on me when I see him.”

“Are you stupid?” Roxas demanded, yanking him by the arm. “I’m serious, are you _stupid_?”

“What did he say?”

“He…” Lea glanced down at Xion. “It was…it was just an old miscommunication we needed to clear up.”

“Good job,” she said simply.

“So where is he?” Roxas looked around warily as though he expected Saïx to appear at any moment. “Is he gonna be here?”

“He’ll end up wherever he got turned,” Lea said. “Which…”

“Would have been here.”

“Yeah?”

“They turned people here,” she said evenly. “I think that’s why that thing was…wait—”

But Lea was already gone, sprinting towards the dark shape that had burst into view towards the edge of the cliffs and promptly collapsed in a heap.

“ _Isa!_ ”

For the second time he fell to his knees at Isa’s side, and hesitated for an infinite instant before reaching for his shoulders, immediately sighing in relief when a black-gloved hand closed over his arm and squeezed.

“Lea,” the soft, exhausted voice murmured. “Lea.”

“You’re here,” Lea breathed. “Isa.”

He nodded weakly without raising his head. “That would appear to be the case.”

“Are you hurt?”

And Isa chuckled, a tiny, pained sound, but genuine all the same, and the only thing that kept Lea’s tears from falling was the jibe he knew would come even in his current state were Isa to see him crying.

“I’m supposed to say no,” he said. He lifted his head slightly to look up at the two of them, watching from a distance as they had when he had faded as Saïx, Xion still with her hands pressed over her heart, but this time their eyes were warm and their expressions relieved. “But you two are just as strong as you look, unfortunately.”

Roxas smirked. “Good to see you in one piece, Saïx.”

“Isa,” Xion corrected him. “This is Isa.”

“Oh. Well, nice to—meet you, in one piece, Isa.”

“You may need to define what you mean by one piece.” Isa winced. “And please don’t make me laugh. I am fairly certain Xion broke a rib.”

Roxas held out his hand to high five Xion, who was staring at Isa with a stricken expression, but slapped his palm back all the same as soon as she saw the smile on his face.

“Thank you,” Isa said. “I mean it.”

Lea placed his hand on Isa’s cheek, and Isa leaned into it, much as his Heartless had done not ten minutes earlier, this time as a greeting rather than a goodbye.

Hesitantly, he met Lea’s eyes. The green was cool and steady and clear, and though his eyes were glassy with tears, they were not grieving. For the first time in a decade, the look in Isa’s eyes could be fully and completely described as— _happiness._

“You’re really here.”

“I’m really here.” He paused, a shadow crossing over his face. “Lea, I’m—”

“Oh, shut up,” Lea grumbled, and he grabbed Isa’s face in both his hands and kissed him. Isa stiffened, at first, having not been kissed at all since Saïx’s last frantic encounter with Axel a few years back, but instinctively he countered Lea’s heat with his own sharpness and they fit together as well as they ever had. There was a comfort beyond words, he thought, in the knowledge that after everything, he still remembered how to kiss Lea.

“Gross,” muttered Roxas before Xion stepped on his foot and shook her head vehemently.

Isa dropped his head to Lea’s shoulder to hide the tears that he could no longer hold back and Lea wrapped his arms around him, chin resting on the top of his head as his own finally fell into Isa’s matted hair.

“It’s over,” he said softly. “You don’t have to be alone anymore. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

“I missed you,” Isa managed to mumble around the rocky lump in his throat.

Lea tightened his grip. “Told you I’d drag you home,” he murmured into Isa’s hair.

Xion smiled as she watched them, folded hands pressed against her mouth. Isa lifted his head and met her eyes with his own for the first time, and he returned her smile with a look that tried to convey a thousand words with a glance.

_I hope to one day earn your forgiveness._

_I know that you will._

“Thank you,” Isa said.

“Thank you, Xion.”


End file.
